Book picks similar to
Lost Knowledge of the Ancients: A Graham Hancock Reader by Graham Hancock
history
non-fiction
alternative
science
What We Leave Behind
Derrick Jensen - 2009
Human waste, once considered a gift to the soil, has become toxic material that has broken the essential cycle of decay and regeneration. Here, award-winning author Derrick Jensen and activist Aric McBay weave historical analysis and devastatingly beautiful prose to remind us that life--human and nonhuman--will not go on unless we do everything we can to facilitate the most basic process on earth, the root of sustainability: one being's waste must always become another being's food.
Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt
John Anthony West - 1979
In this pioneering study West documents that: Hieroglyphs carry hermetic messages that convey the subtler realities of the Sacred Science of the Pharaohs. Egyptian science, medicine, mathematics, and astronomy were more sophisticated than most modern Egyptologists acknowledge. Egyptian knowledge of the universe was a legacy from a highly sophisticated civilization that flourished thousands of years ago. The great Sphinx represents geological proof that such a civilization existed. This revised edition includes a new introduction linking Egyptian spiritual science with the perennial wisdom tradition and an appendix updating West's work in redating the Sphinx. Illustrated with over 140 photographs and line drawings.
Slave Species of God: The Story of Humankind from the Cradle of Humankind
Michael Tellinger - 2005
Were humans created by God as Slaves? Was Abraham the first human Spy? Was Jesus an accidental Messiah? This work takes readers on a odyssey of the origins of humankind drawing on analogies between discoveries in genetic engineering and ancient archaeological finds.
The Fated Sky: Astrology in History
Benson Bobrick - 2005
'Astrology must be right,' wrote the American astrologer Evangeline Adams, claimed descendant of John Quincy Adams, in a challenge to skeptics in 1929. 'There can be no appeal from the Infinite.' The Fated Sky explores both the history of astrology & the controversial subject of its historical influence. It's the 1st serious book to fully engage astrology in this way. Astrology is the oldest occult sciences, also the origin of science itself. Astronomy, mathematics & other disciplines arose in part to make possible the calculations necessary in casting horoscopes. For 5000 years, the influence of the stars has been viewed as shaping the course of affairs. According to recent polls, at least 30% of Americans believe in it, tho modern astrology is utterly different from the doctrine of the stars that won the respect & allegiance of the greatest thinkers, scientists & writers--Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Arab & Persian--of earlier days. Statesmen, popes & kings once embraced it. Th Aquinas found it compatible with Xian faith. There are some 200 allusions to it in Shakespeare's plays, all their predictions fulfilled. The great astronomers of the scientific revolution--Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler--were adherents. Newton's appetite for mathematics was whetted by an astrological text. Prominent figures such as Churchill, deGaulle & Reagan have consulted astrologers, heeding their advice. Universities as diverse as Oxford & Spain's Univ. of Zaragoza offer courses in the subject, fulfilling Jung's prediction that astrology would again become the subject of serious discourse. Whether astrology actually has the powers ascribed to it is open to debate. But there's no doubt that it maintains a hold on the human mind. The Fated Sky gives a comprehensive account of this subject & its enduring influence on history & the history of ideas.
The Denisovans: The History of the Extinct Archaic Humans Who Spread Across Asia during the Paleolithic Era
Charles River Editors - 2020
Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism
Richard C. Carrier - 2005
A complete worldview is presented and defended, covering every subject from knowledge to art, from metaphysics to morality, from theology to politics. Topics include free will, the nature of the universe, the meaning of life, and much more, arguing from scientific evidence that there is only a physical, natural world without gods or spirits, but that we can still live a life of love, meaning, and joy.
Making Sense
Sam Harris - 2013
With over one million downloads per episode, these discussions have clearly hit a nerve, frequently walking a tightrope where either host or guest - and sometimes both - lose their footing, but always in search off a greater understanding of the world in which we live. for Harris, honest conversation, no matter how difficult or controversial, represents the only path to moral and intellectual progress.This book includes a dozen of the best conversations from 'MAKING SENSE', including talks with Daniel Kahneman, Timothy Snyder, Nick Bostrom, and Glen Loury, on topics that range from the nature of consciousness and free will, to politics and extremism, to living ethically. Together they shine a light on what it means to "make sense" in the modern world.RUNNING TIME ⇒ 22hrs.©2020 Sam Harris (P)2020 HarperAudio
The Illustrated Bloodline of the Holy Grail: Hidden Lineage of Jesus Revealed
Laurence Gardner - 2000
Yet the authors could offer no real proof, since their access to relevant source material was restricted. At last the truth can be told!This extraordinary and controversial book, packed with intrigue, begins where others have ended. Sir Laurence Gardner has been granted privileged access to European Sovereign and Nobel archives, along with favored insight into chivalric and Church repositories. He proves for the first time that there is a royal heritage of the Messiah in the West and documents the systematic and continuing suppression of records tracing the descendant of the sacred lineage by regimes down the centuries.This unique book, lavishly illustrated in full-color throughout, gives a detailed genealogical account of the authentic line of succession of the Blood Royal from the sons of Jesus and his brother James down to the present day.
Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact
Vine Deloria Jr. - 1995
Claiming that science has created a largely fictional scenario for American Indians in prehistoric North America, Deloria offers an alternative view of the continent's history as seen through the eyes and memories of Native Americans. Further, he warns future generations of scientists not to repeat the ethnocentric omissions and fallacies of the past by dismissing Native oral tradition as mere legends.
The Crime Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained
Shanna Hogan - 2017
See the gory details of each crime and how it was solved, with renowned quotes and detailed criminal profiles letting you delve into the criminal mind.The Crime Book looks at the big ideas and concepts in criminology spanning from pirates, kidnapping and political plots to modern con artists, serial killers and rogue traders, including the Black Dahlia investigation, the Mississippi Scheme, and the notorious Jeffrey Dahmer.The Crime Book is the perfect introduction to law enforcement and criminology across history's most infamous crimes.
The Ascension Mysteries: Revealing the Cosmic Battle Between Good and Evil
David Wilcock - 2016
With his latest book, The Ascension Mysteries, David will take readers on a surprising and enthralling journey through the history of the universe, exploring the great Cosmic Battle surrounding our own Ascension. David Wilcock’s previous New York Times bestsellers, The Source Field Investigations and The Synchronicity Key, used cutting-edge alternative science to reveal oft-hidden truths about our universe. In The Ascension Mysteries, David takes us on a gripping personal journey that describes the secret cosmic battle between positive and negative happening every day, hidden in both the traumas of our own lives and the world’s headlines. Through his contact with a positive higher intelligence behind the UFO phenomenon, groundbreaking scientific information, and data from high-ranking government whistle-blowers, David reveals that the earth is now on the front lines of a battle that has been raging between positive and negative extraterrestrials for hundreds of thousands of years. The Ascension Mysteries explores the towering personal obstacles David overcame to unlock the great secrets of our universe and looks ahead to what this battle means for each of us personally. By unifying ancient texts from a variety of religions with scientific data and insider testimony, David presents a stunning conclusion—that Earth is on the verge of a massive cosmic event that will transform matter, energy, consciousness, and biological life as we now know it and will utterly defeat the great villains of our time.
Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe
Robert Lanza - 2009
Lanza has teamed with Bob Berman, the most widely read astronomer in the world, to produce Biocentrism, a revolutionary new view of the universe.Every now and then a simple yet radical idea shakes the very foundations of knowledge. The startling discovery that the world was not flat challenged and ultimately changed the way people perceived themselves and their relationship with the world. For most humans of the 15th century, the notion of Earth as ball of rock was nonsense. The whole of Western, natural philosophy is undergoing a sea change again, increasingly being forced upon us by the experimental findings of quantum theory, and at the same time, towards doubt and uncertainty in the physical explanations of the universe’s genesis and structure. Biocentrism completes this shift in worldview, turning the planet upside down again with the revolutionary view that life creates the universe instead of the other way around.In this paradigm, life is not an accidental byproduct of the laws of physics. Biocentrism takes the reader on a seemingly improbable but ultimately inescapable journey through a foreign universe—our own—from the viewpoints of an acclaimed biologist and a leading astronomer. Switching perspective from physics to biology unlocks the cages in which Western science has unwittingly managed to confine itself. Biocentrism will shatter the reader’s ideas of life—time and space, and even death. At the same time it will release us from the dull worldview of life being merely the activity of an admixture of carbon and a few other elements; it suggests the exhilarating possibility that life is fundamentally immortal.The 21st century is predicted to be the Century of Biology, a shift from the previous century dominated by physics. It seems fitting, then, to begin the century by turning the universe outside-in and unifying the foundations of science with a simple idea discovered by one of the leading life-scientists of our age. Biocentrism awakens in readers a new sense of possibility, and is full of so many shocking new perspectives that the reader will never see reality the same way again.
The Dawn of Human Culture
Richard G. Klein - 2002
This compelling book introduces a bold new theory on this unsolved mystery. Author Richard Klein reexamines the archaeological evidence and brings in new discoveries in the study of the human brain. These studies detail the changes that enabled humans to think and behave in far more sophisticated ways than before, resulting in the incredibly rapid evolution of new skills. Richard Klein has been described as "the premier anthropologist in the country today" by Evolutionary Anthropology. Here, he and coauthor Blake Edgar shed new light on the full story of a truly fascinating period of evolution.Richard G. Klein, PhD (Palo Alto, CA), is a Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University. He is the author of the definitive academic book on the subject of the origins of human culture, The Human Career. Blake Edgar (San Francisco, CA) is the coauthor of the very successful From Lucy to Language, with Dr. Donald Johanson. He has written extensively for Discover, GEO, and numerous other magazines.
Simple Taoism: A Guide to Living in Balance
C. Alexander Simpkins - 1999
Divided into three parts, the book outlines:A clear explanation of Taoism and how to apply its best aspects to your daily life.Simple instructions for exercises to lead a fuller life—meditation, breathing, chi kung, and tai chi chuan.An informative discussion of key Taoist concepts, including wu-wei (nonaction), yin and yang, and Te (power virtue, life).
Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment
Phil Zuckerman - 2008
But most residents of Denmark and Sweden, he found, don't worship any god at all, don't pray, and don't give much credence to religious dogma of any kind. Instead of being bastions of sin and corruption, however, as the Christian Right has suggested a godless society would be, these countries are filled with residents who score at the very top of the "happiness index" and enjoy their healthy societies, which boast some of the lowest rates of violent crime in the world (along with some of the lowest levels of corruption), excellent educational systems, strong economies, well-supported arts, free health care, egalitarian social policies, outstanding bike paths, and great beer.Zuckerman formally interviewed nearly 150 Danes and Swedes of all ages and educational backgrounds over the course of fourteen months. He was particularly interested in the worldviews of people who live their lives without religious orientation. How do they think about and cope with death? Are they worried about an afterlife? What he found is that nearly all of his interviewees live their lives without much fear of the Grim Reaper or worries about the hereafter. This led him to wonder how and why it is that certain societies are non-religious in a world that seems to be marked by increasing religiosity. Drawing on prominent sociological theories and his own extensive research, Zuckerman ventures some interesting answers.This fascinating approach directly counters the claims of outspoken, conservative American Christians who argue that a society without God would be hell on earth. It is crucial, Zuckerman believes, for Americans to know that "society without God is not only possible, but it can be quite civil and pleasant."